Quotations

Ram Dass - On Interconnectedness"Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not.
Our actions and states of mind matter, because we're so deeply inner connected with one another.
Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment,
and being love is the supreme creative act."

Vaclav Havel - from The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice

“Consciousness precedes Being, and not the other way around... For this reason, the salvation of this human world lies nowhere
else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human modesty, and in human responsibility.
Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better.”

Dr. Elisabeth Kȕbler-Ross
on Death

"Death is simply a shedding of the physical
body like the butterfly shedding its cocoon. It is a transition to a higher state of consciousness
where you continue to perceive, understand, laugh and grow. When we have
passed the tests we are sent to earth to learn, we are allowed to
graduate.
We are allowed to shed our body, which imprisons our souls. We run after
values that, at death, become zero. At the end of your life, nobody asks
you how many degrees you have, or how many mansions you built, or how
many Rolls Royces you could afford.That’s what dying patients teach you. After your death,
when most of you for the first time realize what life here is all about,
you begin to see that your life here is almost nothing but the sum total
of every choice you have made during every moment of your life.
Your thoughts, which you are responsible for, are as
real as your deeds.You will begin to realize that every word and every deed
affects your life and has also touched thousands of lives. I believe
that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept
the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our
lifetime. There is within each one of us a potential for goodness beyond
our imagining; for giving which seeks no reward; for listening without
judgment; for loving unconditionally.”

Daniel Webster

"One may live as a conqueror, a king or a magistrate; but he must die as a man. The bed of death brings
every human being to his pure individuality; to the intense contemplation of that deepest and most solemn of
all relations, the relation between the creature and his Creator. Here it is that fame and renown cannot assist us;
that all external things must fail to aid us; that even friends, affection and human love and devotedness cannot succor us."

Dr. Eben Alexander, III on his message from the after-life

"You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.
You have nothing to fear.
There is nothing you can do wrong over there."

George Bernard Shaw

"This is the true joy in life - that being used for a purpose
recognized by yourself as a mighty one - that being a force of nature
instead of a feverish, selfish, little clod of ailments and grievances
complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community.
As long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I
want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the
morel live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Life is no brief candle for me. There is a sort of splendid torch
which I've got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as
brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

"If you wish to upset the law that all crows
are black, you must not seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if
you can prove one single crow be white."

Charles H. Duell,
Commissioner U.S. Patent Office 1899

"Everything that
can be invented has been invented."

Chief Seattle circa 1850:

"This we know. All things are connected like the
blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever
befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. Man did not weave the web
of life; he is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he
does to himself."

Dr. Albert Einstein

“You can’t solve a problem using the same level of
thinking that got you into that problem”.

"Give"Given the millions
of billions of Earth-like planets, life elsewhere in the Universe
without a doubt, does exist. In the vastness of the Universe we are not
alone."

"There is not the slightest indication that
nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean the atom would
have to be shattered at will."

Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator 1901>

"I am tired of all
this sort of thing called science here ... We have spent millions in
that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be
stopped."

Wilbur Wright, 1908

"I confess that in
1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty
years. Two years later we ourselves made flights. This demonstration of
my impotence as a prophet gave me such a shock that ever since I have
distrusted myself and avoided all predictions."

Nikola Tesla

"Of all the frictional resistance, the one that most retards human movement is
ignorance, what Buddha called "the greatest evil in the world." The
friction which results from ignorance can be reduced only by the spread
of knowledge and the unification of the heterogeneous elements of
humanity. No effort could be better spent."

"No matter what we attempt to do, no matter to what fields we turn our efforts, we are dependent
on power. We have to evolve means of obtaining energy from
stores which are forever inexhaustible, to perfect methods which
do not imply consumption and waste of any material whatever. If
we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and
exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly
wasteful and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming
generations."

Chinese proverb

“If we do not change direction, we are likely to
end up exactly where we are headed”.

Albert A. Michelson German Born American
Physicist 1894

"The more
important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been
discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility
of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is
exceedingly remote.... Our future discoveries must be looked for in the
sixth place of decimals."

Margret Mead

“Never doubt the power of a small group of people
to change the world. Nothing else ever has”.

Buddha

“In order to fully understand, you have to be one
with what you want to understand”.

Paul Davies

“You are … host to a billion or so atoms that once
belonged to Jesus Christ, or Julius Caesar, or the Buddha, or the tree
that the Buddha once sat beneath”.

Niccollo Machavelli circa 1500

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand,
more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take
the lead in the introduction of a new order of things".

Dr. Steven Hawking - A Brief History of
Time

“Ever since the
dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as
unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the
underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are
here and where we came from. Our goal is nothing less than a complete
description of the universe we live in.”

Dr. Edgar Mitchell on reflections of his trip to
the moon:

“When I went to the moon, I was as pragmatic a test
pilot, engineer, and scientist as any of my colleagues … But there was
another aspect to my experience during Apollo 14, and it … began with
the breathtaking experience of seeing planet earth floating in the
vastness of space. The first thing that came to mind as I looked at
earth was its incredible beauty … a splendid blue and white jewel
suspended against a velvet black sky. How peacefully, how harmoniously,
how marvelously it seemed to fit into the evolutionary pattern by which
the universe is maintained. In a peak experience, the presence of
divinity became almost palpable and I knew that life in the universe was
not just an accident based on random process. … It was knowledge gained
through private subjective awareness, but it was - and still is - every
bit as real as the objective data upon which, say, the navigational
program or the communications system were based. Clearly, the universe
had meaning and direction … an unseen dimension behind the visible
creation that gives it an intelligent design and that gives life
purpose”.